BIODIVERSITY BEYOND NATIONAL JURISDICTION TREATY - ENVIRONMENT
News: UN
adopts "historic" high seas treaty to protect marine life
What's in the news?
● The
United Nations adopted a landmark international treaty to govern the high seas
after nearly two decades of negotiations.
Key takeaways:
● UN
Secretary-General António Guterres said climate change "is heating our planet,
disrupting weather patterns and ocean currents, and altering marine ecosystems
and the species living there."
● He
noted biodiversity "is under attack from overfishing, over-exploitation
and ocean acidification" — with one third of fish stocks being harvested
at unsustainable levels.
Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty:
Uniqueness:
● The
first-ever legally binding global agreement of its kind, known as the High Seas Treaty, provides a framework
for environmental protections to biodiversity in international waters - which cover over 60% of the Earth’s surface.
● Only
1.2% of the world's ocean areas are currently protected.
Aim:
● To
protect 30% of the world's land and water by 2030 with the aim of halting and
reversing the current extinction crisis.
Ratification:
● The
new treaty will be opened for signatures on Sept. 20, during the annual meeting
of world leaders at the General Assembly, and it will take effect once it is
ratified by 60 countries.
● The
new treaty is under the UN Convention on
the Law of the Sea, which came into force in 1994, before marine
biodiversity was a well-established concept.
Features:
● The
treaty will create a new body to
manage conservation of ocean life.
● It
also aims to establish marine protected
areas in the high seas.
● It
also establishes ground rules for
conducting environmental impact assessments for commercial activities in
the oceans.
● The
treaty also establishes principles for
sharing the benefits of “marine genetic resources” (MGR) collected by
scientific research in international waters.
○ It
is a key demand of developing countries who insisted that the fruits of such
discoveries could not be solely controlled by richer countries with money to
finance expeditions to look for potentially new lucrative ingredients for
medicine and cosmetics.
● Such
activities, while not listed in the text, would include anything from fishing
and maritime transport to more controversial pursuits, like deep-sea mining or
even geo-engineering programmes aimed at fighting global warming.
Significance:
● It
will govern the high seas and protect remote ecosystems vital to humanity.